


can you please crawl out your window?

by curlymcclain



Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: Family Bonding, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Hurt/Comfort, No Incest, Other, Pre-Canon, can they be friends? can they PLEASE be friends?
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-08-17
Updated: 2020-09-07
Packaged: 2021-03-06 03:47:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 14,546
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25963105
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/curlymcclain/pseuds/curlymcclain
Summary: On seven different days in between 2002-2007, each Hargreeves stands in front of the door. If they leave, they all think, that could be it. They could run, start someplace new where no one has ever heard of them. They each taste freedom on the tips of their tongues. And still they each know, somehow, that they’ll come back. Even when they tell themselves they won’t, they know they’ll slink home to face their father once again, like they always do. But in the meantime, the seven of them will find some way to be teenagers- even for just a night.(or, each Hargreeves sneaks out.)
Relationships: Allison Hargreeves & Klaus Hargreeves, Ben Hargreeves & Klaus Hargreeves, Diego Hargreeves & Klaus Hargreeves, Luther Hargreeves & Vanya Hargreeves, The Hargreeves Family
Comments: 47
Kudos: 116





	1. these days (luther buys a doughnut)

**Author's Note:**

> with his business-like anger and bloodhounds that kneel  
> if he needs a third eye he just grows it
> 
> hey, please crawl out your window  
> use your hands and legs it won't ruin you  
> how can you say he will haunt you?  
> you can go back to him any time you want to

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> part one of the big sneaking out fic!!! i really think luther deserves some rights and today is luther day in #hargreevesappreciationweek after all

_2004_

  
Diego rolls his eyes again. One more time, Luther thinks, and he’s getting tackled. 

“You need a new tradition, dude,” Diego’s saying as he kicks off his boots, “All this post-mission adrenaline is going straight to your head.”

“It’s not that.” Luther looks out the window anxiously. If he’s going to do this, he’ll have to do it soon, and he doesn’t want to lose any light.

“Whatever you say.”

The mission they’d just gotten back from hadn’t been stellar, but it hadn’t been disastrous, either. They had saved everyone they needed to save, but Luther doesn’t exactly expect to see his picture on the front page tomorrow (and contrary to what his siblings believe, that won’t bother him). 

There had been a group of masked men at the governor’s son’s house, holding his family hostage. It was the kind of mission they should really send Allison on alone, but Reginald’s insistence on their working as a team meant they broke a window and took the team out one by one. 

It hadn’t all gone smoothly. The Umbrella Academy walked away with too many injuries and left behind a virtually destroyed living room. 

Therefore, the ride home had been awkward. And after the last few missions, Luther has started being tasked with giving what their father calls “Notes for Improvement”.

It used to be that Reginald would sit across from them in the back of the town car, berating them one by one for what they should have done better. Luther would always pay close attention to his notes, while most of the others got too distracted by the hordes of fans at the windows, screaming with joy, unaware of the icy tension inside.

But now, Reginald trusts Luther to take notes himself. 

He’d been expected to take on the responsibility as a great honor, but it doesn’t feel like one. He does it, of course, even though part of him wishes he didn’t have to. The others already harbor resentment towards him, he doesn’t have to be a genius to know that. Luther giving them pointers on heroics can’t help. 

He reminds himself that his father wants him to do it, so there must be a good reason- there always is. 

Diego is probably just angry with him because he’d gotten the harshest criticism. It isn’t Luther’s fault that he’d been too impulsive, as usual, and didn’t aim carefully enough. It isn’t Luther’s fault that Ben had walked away with a shallow gash on his forearm where Diego’s knife had grazed him. And it isn’t Luther’s fault that he had to tell him so.

Currently, they’re not arguing about the mission, but it’s clearly unresolved, simmering below the surface. Any minute now, he expects Diego to try and shove him into the hallway. But Luther isn’t going to drop this subject until he knows for sure. Because something else had gone wrong after they had come back.

“You didn’t see her on the way back in? When you went to see Mom?” 

“I already told you, no,” Diego says. “Maybe you're just on edge. It's almost the 21st, remember? Everybody's a little jumpy.”

“It's not that. Plus Allison hasn’t seen her either,” Luther presses. He hovers at the entrance to the kitchen, where Diego’s flung himself up onto the counter. Since they’d arrived home, he's already managed to find Mom and gotten her to make him a snack. 

“She’s probably in her room,” Diego says with his mouth full of grilled cheese. “Or in the library.”

Now it’s Luther’s turn to roll his eyes. “I already looked. Listen, she always practices violin while we go on missions. Always. But she wasn’t when we came in today. When I passed her room, she wasn’t in there. I’ve been looking around for her but- I don’t know. I have a bad feeling.”

Luther knows his brother well enough- is stuck training with him often enough- that he knows the exact look on his face that precedes a nasty comment, one only intended to piss him off. Diego kicks off from the counter and makes that face now, standing as intimidatingly as he can while holding half a grilled cheese sandwich. “Oh, I get it. One more person to save, huh.”

“Come on-“

“Governor’s kid not enough for one day. Now poor, helpless Vanya, too.”

Luther clenches his fists. “I’m serious. I’ve been looking all over and she’s not anywhere in the Academy.”

“So, she went out to get some fresh air. Good for her, she’s finally pushing off from the old man,” Diego shrugs. 

“We don’t know that,” Luther objects. “If someone were to come after us, wouldn’t she be a good target? If someone found out that she’s here in the house, virtually unprotected every time we go on a mission-?”

He holds out his hands- _do the math._

At this, Diego bites his lip, finally considering the possibility. “Still,” he says after a thoughtful pause. “What are the odds of that.”

“I know, but-“

“Hey, if she’s not back by dinner, I’ll go look for her myself. Okay?”

It’s clear he means it, but there’s still something in the tilt of his head, the lightness in his tone, telling Luther that Diego isn’t worried. He’s positive that she’ll come back. He’s probably right.

But Luther doesn’t know how to explain that if something were to happen to one of them, especially to Vanya, there would be no one to blame but himself. Being Number One means being the _umbrella for the umbrellas_ , as his father used to tell him on their private walks. He won’t sit here and eat sandwiches until Vanya wanders back home by her lonesome- he can’t.

With a dismissive nod, he storms out of the kitchen and up to his room, a plan already forming.

Wait until dinner, Diego had said. What a colossal joke. 

None of them really own street clothes except for Klaus and Allison, who make it their business to hoard clothing at any opportunity. So Luther is stuck creeping out into the hallway wearing his buttoned up white shirt and his only pair of pants with no blood on them. 

As he heads down the hall, he considers stopping and asking one of his siblings for advice; Klaus, maybe, who sneaks out more than any of the rest of them combined. Luther has never thought to ask him how he does it, how he avoids getting caught (on the occasions he actually does avoid getting caught.)

Before he has time to change his mind- picturing his father in his study at this very moment, poring over his notebooks is almost enough- Luther hurries down the stairs and back into the kitchen. Diego is nowhere to be seen, mercifully. 

Luther stands in front of the door that leads to the street. 

Surely, before long, Reginald will notice that Luther is gone. He’ll summon him for an evening talk or a lingering question about today’s mission, and Luther won’t be there. He’ll be shocked, disappointed, angry. For the first time, Luther will be the one in the hot seat, standing sheepishly in his father’s office as he bellows about the importance of discipline, about worthlessness, _why can’t you find it within yourself to be more like Number One?_

What will he say when it’s Luther that has let him down?

He only entertains these thoughts for a split second before they’re replaced by images of Vanya, lost. Alone and frightened, or worse. The idea of her normalcy being taken advantage of is more than enough to shove Luther out the door.

* * *

  
Luther has been wandering the downtown area for nearly two hours before he realizes that he’s free.

He checks neighborhoods that he knows are criminal hotbeds, he checks hospitals. He searches the places he knows Vanya likes- though, embarrassingly, all he seems to know about Vanya’s interests is that she plays the violin and likes to read. He doesn’t even know what genre.

Luther is winding up and down aisles at a used bookstore when it hits him like a ton of bricks.

There is nowhere for him to be, now that he’s out in the world. He could leave this store and take a bus to the beach, the planetarium, the shopping mall he's never even been allowed to _want_ to go into. He has a distinct, unnerving feeling that his tether has been snapped. As gratifying as it is (as many hot dogs as he wants!) the rush of freedom is followed immediately by a wave of anxiety.

Luther can’t be free from the Academy. He can’t leave behind the people of this city, the ones who need him. How pathetic, how selfish it would be to allow himself that. 

Still, he buys the hot dogs. 

* * *

  
Dusk is starting to fall, and there hasn’t been any sign of Vanya. Luther’s anxiety has grown to a fever pitch, every time he blinks he can see her. She’s powerless even at home, against her siblings’ teasing. But out here in the world, where even Luther is too nervous to be? He rips a bit of dead skin off his lip and vows that he won’t set foot in the Academy until he finds her.

He’s started to shift his strategy. Perhaps, he thinks begrudgingly, Diego is right and she did sneak out. Luther has been taking criminology lessons since age three- he knows runaways rarely go far. 

Searching the blocks surrounding the Academy, he doesn’t see anything he thinks Vanya would find enticing. Maybe he should have brought Ben. He knows her better than anyone.

( _Well_ , Luther corrects himself, _almost anyone._ ) 

He turns a corner, questioning whether he should check the library again, and a bright neon sign catches his eye. “Of course,” he mutters.

Luther darts across the street, barely checking for cars. 

Vanya is sitting at the farthest table from the entrance to Griddy’s Doughnuts, her hands in her lap and an empty plate in front of her. Her jacket is nowhere to be seen; if Luther hadn’t been looking for her, he may not have noticed she was there.

But he does, relief washing over him as he hurries over, accidentally knocking a customer's plate to the floor. 

“Sorry, sorry,” he stammers as he lamely tries to mop up the mess. “I’m so sorry, Ma'am, let me buy you a new one, I'm-.”

“Luther?”

His head snaps up at the sound of his name. Luther doesn't know what he thought Vanya’s reaction would be when he found her, but he wouldn’t have put money on her eyes widening, almost in fear. She immediately starts spewing her own apologies, excuses for why she left. Luther stands and cuts her off, not listening to them.

“Hey, hey!” he attempts a light laugh. “It’s okay, it’s fine. Honest.”

Vanya still seems jumpy, as if Luther is a cop about to frisk her. He isn’t good at articulating his feelings- especially not when they’re hurt- so instead he points to the empty seat across from her.

“This taken?”

She shakes her head no. They sit in uncomfortable silence for a few dreadful seconds before Vanya says: “Is Dad here?”

Luther flinches. “Dad? Why would Dad come here, he hates this kind of place.”

“I know. But is he waiting outside?” she gulps, avoiding his eyes. 

“No. Just me.” 

Vanya looks at him now. “ _You_ snuck out?” she asks incredulously. “By yourself?”

Luther clears his throat, eager to change the subject. “Hey, want another one?” he points at her plate. “On me.”

* * *

  
Picking at the remnants of a Boston Cream, Vanya tells Luther why she had left.

“You know what next week is,” she says. "The 21st."

“Of course,” Luther replies with his mouth full. “Like Dad would let us forget.”

Vanya runs a crumb between her thumb and forefinger. She speaks to it instead of her brother. 

“Well, I was asking Mom what he had planned. If he had anything planned for the actual day. And she told me that- um. I assume Dad told you, right?” She says it without judgement, Luther notices. Most of the time, when any of his siblings talk to him, Number One, about Dad, something in their tone always bites.

“Yeah,” he says uneasily. “Yeah, he did.”

Vanya sits up, a bit more enthusiastic. “It’s not what he would want. I’m sure you agree with me, it’s the opposite of what he’d want.”

“You’d know better than me.”

“He’d absolutely hate it,” she says firmly. “I mean, an oil painting?”

The only person to have ever known Vanya better than Ben was Number Five.

“It’s like every day we get closer to it, I can hear his voice in my head. Telling me to ditch the stupid oil painting. Why don’t we try actually _looking_ for him, instead of acting like he’s… you know…?” She trails off, catching herself.

Luther leans in. “What do you think would be better?” he urges. “I mean it. What would you have us do instead?” 

He says it as kindly as he can- it seems very suddenly like Vanya’s opinion on this is the only one that matters.

When Reginald had told Luther about his plan for the two year anniversary of Five’s disappearance, it had seemed like the perfect thing. A grand portrait, given a place of honor in the Academy library? What could be a better tribute to their lost seventh sibling than that, Luther had thought. He’d told his father this with gusto. 

But seeing Vanya, looking so small in her cheap chrome chair, Luther begins to think he has no business deciding what Number Five would want. He’d certainly never known before.

“I’m not sure,” Vanya answers him. She takes a deep breath.

“...Luther, do you remember that night? When we all came here?” She looks around at the shop, like it’s a fine art museum. 

“Yeah,” Luther chuckles. “How could I forget.”

Starting when they were eleven, the Hargreeves kids would climb down the fire escape in Five’s room and go to Griddy’s. Only one or two of them went at a time. But one night, just one, all seven of them had gone. Even Luther. It was the only time he had ever snuck out before now.

“ _That’s_ what Five would want,” she says simply. “For us all to come here and be together. Without Dad.”

Luther resists his reflex, telling him to object to that. 

“I figured I couldn’t get any of you to come here with me,” Vanya says, eyes glassy. “I just wanted to do it the right way.”

“So that’s why you snuck out?”

Vanya nods. This is maybe the longest conversation the two of them have ever had, One and Seven, huddled over a sticky table in a doughnut shop. 

“Well…” Luther says slowly. “I wanna do it the right way, too.”

At Vanya’s timid smile, Luther orders two more doughnuts- one with peanut butter filling, one dotted with miniature marshmallows.

“As close as we can get to those nasty sandwiches of his,” he says.

They toast to Number Five. One year and three hundred fifty nine days gone. 

* * *

  
When they get home, out of uniform and smeared with confectioner’s sugar, Luther braces himself for the worst. He tells Vanya in a whisper to go up to her room as quick as she can. She starts to object, so Luther tries to give her a light push towards the staircase. Vanya gets tossed several feet in the air, landing awkwardly on her feet. 

“Sorry! Sorry, I’m sorry,” Luther says frantically. “I didn’t mean to- just go up, okay? I’ll handle Dad.”

On cue: a bellow.

_“Number One!”_

“Go on, Vanya, _go!”_

Vanya shoots him a fleeting look of concern before scurrying up the stairs. Luther sees a few heads pop over the railing to peer curiously down at him. He knows what they’re thinking before Klaus has to say it.

“Oh, tsk tsk tsk, Number One. You had to get in trouble eventually.”

“Number One! My study, this instant!”

“And such a bright future ahead of you, too,” Klaus coos. “Such a promising young man you were.”

Luther flips him off before sulking to his doom.

* * *

Something unexpected happens while Luther stands stock-still in front of his father’s desk. Reginald paces back and forth, yelling like Luther’s never heard him yell before. This isn’t surprising.

The things he's saying should be surprising, surely. In fact, they’re Luther’s worst nightmare.

“I hope your little sojourn was worth it! Of all my children, this flagrant disregard of rules is simply unforgivable from you! On the day of a mission nearly failed, no less. A mission _you_ supervised. The failure of your team is your failure, and yours alone, Number One. You have failed the dignity of this Academy. You have failed your brothers and sisters. And most importantly, you have failed me.”

But no, the words don’t surprise Luther nearly as much as they should. 

What surprises Luther is how little he‘s hurt by them. He hears his father’s complete and utter disappointment in him, and all Luther feels is impatience. What he’d done was right. He knows it. He had worried about Vanya, he had found her, he had brought her home. It was more than anyone else here could say, including the man snarling and spitting in front of him. 

Then Luther feels the same fear he’d felt in the bookstore. It’s genuinely scary to know with certainty for the first time that his father is wrong.

* * *

  
They all clap politely when Grace unveils the painting above the fireplace. Luther catches Vanya’s eye during Dad’s speech and does his best impression of Number Five’s old scoff.

She smiles.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> please leave a comment and/or find me on tumblr and twitter @ curlymcclain !!
> 
> i wont lie im not thrilled with this chapter.....but the diego one is kinda fire...


	2. what would i want? sky (diego plays basketball)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Diego suddenly had the feeling he was looking into a parallel universe. This was a competition, yes, but there was no real winner. The goal was to have fun, to practice, to be with friends. They wandered in and out as they liked, showing up with drinks they’d just bought at bodegas with their own money, leaving when they got tired of running and facing no repercussions for it. They were smiling, they were wrestling. They were free.
> 
> Diego glanced back at Luther, who was wrapping his knuckles in white cloth. And he decided that somehow, he would find a way to be free, too.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> alternate title: bi boy plays b ball
> 
> happy diego day!

  
_2005_

  
“I don’t know. I just really don’t think you should.”

“Then don’t come.”

Diego turns back to his dresser drawer, and starts to throw its contents onto the floor as he searches. Still aware of Ben’s presence as he shifts uneasily in the doorway, Diego sighs and looks back up at him. 

“What.”

“It’s just-“ Ben glances over his shoulder for the eighth time in the last two minutes. “You know he’ll find out. You saw what happened when Allison tried to go downtown.”

Diego sighs and turns back to his drawer- does he really only have white shirts?- and a prickle of fear begins to stab at his chest. Maybe this was stupid, and Ben’s right, he’d be better off staying here and throwing darts until the next mission rolls along. He’s weighing his options when Ben adds, “You are going alone, right?”

A long silence. Diego stares into his drawer.

“...Right?” 

“Well,” he mutters quickly, “Klaus was gonna come with me.”

_“Klaus?”_

It isn’t like Ben to get in the way of their rebellions, but he’s much more hesitant than Diego, or even Allison and her frequent correspondences with outside boys. Diego knows if he were to blow right past him, he wouldn’t follow, he wouldn't snitch to Luther or to their father later. But the look in his eyes after the mention of Klaus is enough to give Diego serious pause. They’re both thinking the same thing: Klaus doesn’t need to get into any more trouble.

As it hangs silently in the air, Klaus himself appears in the doorway over Ben’s shoulder. “Diego!” his face is unnaturally red, “Ready to go? Ben, you’re coming too, love to see it. A little fresh air’ll do you good.”

Ben backs away into the hall, brows furrowed. “No. No, I’m gonna stay.” His concern is plainly unnoticed by Klaus, bouncing slightly on the balls of his feet in anticipation. 

“Have fun,” Ben shoots another cautious look at Diego before disappearing into his room next door.

“Just us, then,” Klaus makes his way to sit on Diego’s bed, and in the early morning light from the window Diego can see he’s put some kind of glitter on his face. “You’re not wearing your uniform are you?”

“N- Of course not.” He takes one of the white t-shirts and his green track pants. “Let’s go.”

* * *

The plan had formed last week, during training. Every sibling had occasional training off-site, separate and individual sessions meant to assimilate them into the real world or something like that. Allison would accompany their father into neighborhoods that spoke little English, to hone her power in several languages. Ben was taken into bustling, high stress environments where their father knew he would get nervous, in an attempt to better contain his power (but these trips often ended with Ben slinking home, sheepishly carrying his tattered uniform vest in his hands). 

Klaus’ off-site training took place only at night, but no one knew where. He refused to talk about it; he used to come back early in the morning, covered in dust, and lock himself in his room for hours. It was the only time he was ever quiet.

Diego knew it couldn't be anything good, but still he envied him- at least he didn’t have to train with Luther. There was no escaping being lumped in with precious Number One. The two of them were driven to some training facility used for Olympic athletes where Diego would, essentially, sit around and watch Luther play with heavy toys. Diego suspected he was only brought on these trips as a punching bag. 

When he was ten, he’d been taken out on his own trip to go hunting- an attempt to teach him stealth, or accuracy, or something- but he had staunchly refused to kill anything that didn’t deserve killing. So now he gets stuck here, doing exactly what he does at the Academy. For Luther, it’s a treat, but for Diego it’s everyday combat training with better lighting.

Diego had been sitting on a low bench while Luther lifted weights three times his size, waiting to be called over to fight. There was a window behind him; he wouldn’t have noticed it was slightly open had he not heard a loud holler from outside. 

He turned and looked out. Below the window, in the lot next door, was a caged in basketball court. A group of boys around his age swarmed it, laughing and shouting as they ran back and forth on the cement. Diego leaned in. 

The boys sitting on the metal bleachers were captivated, clapping and whooping while their friends played. Diego watched as a lone kid walked onto the court from the sidewalk- it was clear the others didn’t know him. Within a minute, he was on the court and in the game, barking at the others as if he’d always been there.

Diego suddenly had the feeling he was looking into a parallel universe. This was a competition, yes, but there was no real winner. The goal was to have fun, to practice, to be with friends. They wandered in and out as they liked, showing up with drinks they’d just bought at bodegas with their own money, leaving when they got tired of running and facing no repercussions for it. They were smiling, they were wrestling. They were free.

Diego glanced back at Luther, who was wrapping his knuckles in white cloth. And he decided that somehow, he would find a way to be free, too.

* * *

  
Which is how he ended up here.

Their father is on a trip. Some space program in Europe required his help immediately, and he’d left without warning. Diego saw this as his perfect opportunity. 

Klaus had wanted to tag along for any excuse to get out of the Academy. Especially now, with their dad gone, they’d be able to sneak out in the morning, spend a whole day outside. 

They’re half a block away when they hear shouting, heavy steps, the thud of the ball on pavement. Diego tightens his grip around his bag, his only one without the Umbrella Academy crest on it. A pit of anxiety is brewing in his gut as they walk closer to the chain link fence.

“So, how macho are these guys, exactly?” Klaus says at his shoulder. “Any chance I’m getting lucky?”

Diego holds out a hand to stop him. “Please don’t embarrass me.”

Rolling his eyes, Klaus brushes his hand away and keeps walking. “Yeesh, okay. Nothing wrong with a little flirting, but I get it. That's not what I meant, anyway.”

“Well, what did you mean?”

Diego doesn’t get an answer, just a mad grin. Rolling his eyes, he almost forgets to be nervous as they turn onto the court. 

In his head, he’d pictured showing up here and having everything stop. Everyone- in his mind- turned and looked him up and down, saw at once that he wasn’t like them, he didn’t belong. But it doesn’t happen. He gets a quick glance from a few kids as he heads to the low bleachers, and that’s all. The worst thing that happens is when a boy turns and smirks at Klaus’ faux fur coat.

There aren’t as many people here as there were on the day Diego had watched them from the window. He doesn’t know if that’s good or bad for the game, but at least there are less people to see if he fucks up spectacularly.

Diego drops his bag on the top row next to where Klaus sits. “Break a leg, bro,” he says, his teeth already gritted around a cigarette. “Make ‘em cry.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Diego flicks him in the side of the head and runs down the steps onto the court. 

He’d watched them long enough to know the basic etiquette; a quick acknowledgement from the de facto leader of one team, the tallest here- “‘Kay, Scarface is with me”- and that was it. 

Diego had never actually played basketball before, but something about a sport that involves jumping high in the air and aiming things at a target seems to come naturally to him.

Within the hour, Klaus’ enthusiastic cheers for Diego are being nearly drowned out. 

It all comes so easily; he knows where his opponents are going to go before they do, he smacks the ball out of the air without even thinking about it. And of course, he makes every shot, even one from the opposite end of the court, without touching the rim.

Before long, the other side is demanding they switch up the teams so they can get at least one round with Scarface on their side.

“No fucking way,” the kid who’d given him the nickname claps him on the back as he calls out. “He’s with us. Right?” 

“Uh- yeah,” Diego says, flustered. The boy’s hand is still clasped around his shoulder. “Yeah, whatever.”

The boy laughs loudly. “‘Whatever’. Where’ve you been hiding, man?” 

Diego isn’t sure what he means, or how to answer. Luckily he doesn’t have to.

“Quiet type, that’s cool, I get it,” the boy says. “Got a name?”

“Diego.”

He takes his hand off Diego’s shoulder and holds it out. “Charlie. Hey, while we’re breaking, go see what the deal is with your friend. I don’t wanna get anybody into trouble, but we try not to do that here.”

“Wh-“ Diego follows his gaze up to the top of the bleachers, where Klaus is sitting far too close to a kid, talking out of the corner of his mouth. After a few seconds, the kid stands up and walks away like Klaus was never there.

Diego marches up to Klaus, making sure to shoulder check the kid on the way. “What are you doing?” he demands in a harsh whisper. “Are you fucking this up?”

Klaus holds out his arms in feigned innocence. “Me? I told you I wouldn’t embarrass you, c’mon. I’m your biggest fan.”

Diego sets his chin and stares down at his brother. His pupils are dilated, but that doesn’t necessarily mean he’s lying- they’ve been like that every day since he was fourteen. 

Still; Diego isn’t about to let him ruin this. On impulse, he dives for Klaus’ jacket pocket. They scuffle as Klaus protests and squirms, tries to bite Diego’s hand, but Diego emerges with a shapeless blob of tin foil. Peeling it back, he sees at least a half dozen baggies of coarse white powder.

“What the fuck is this?” he says, shoving it back into Klaus’ coat as soon as he sees it. “You promised-“

“I promised I wouldn’t flirt.”

“Dealing drugs is worse, dipshit!” Diego looks frantically over his shoulder to where Charlie and a few others are starting to glance at them with curiosity. “Put this shit away, I’m serious. Throw it out.”

Klaus sneers at him. “You can’t make me.”

In the past few years, Diego has felt Klaus begin to slip away. Not just from him- though that hasn’t felt great, either- but from the whole Academy. From the whole world. Diego’s worried it has something to do with his off-site training, which had been unceremoniously cancelled last year. Now, when it was supposed to be Klaus’ turn to go out to wherever he’d gone, Reginald stiffly retreated to his office while a heavy cloud of pot smoke and cheap candle smell eked out the bottom of Klaus’ bedroom door. 

Diego isn’t sure how to deal with it, so largely he hasn’t been. “Yeah, I _can_ make you,” he hisses. “But I don’t wanna cause a scene.”

“Hey! Diego!”

Diego turns to see everyone on the court waiting for him. 

“Ready?” Charlie calls. 

Diego jabs a finger in Klaus’ face. “Later.”

Shaking off his annoyance, he heads back down to the game.

* * *

  
They’re playing to 21. They’re almost at 16 when things start going wrong.

Maybe he was rattled by his argument with Klaus, or the need to impress Charlie and everyone else here, or maybe he just started having too much fun. All he knows is he was cornered, absolutely no open shot for him to take, and the ball curved in an impossible arch, up and over the arms of four people. 

Diego freezes, but it gets brushed off as a crazy happenstance. Charlie starts cheering, and everyone else follows. Weirdest shot they’ve ever seen, that’s all.

He reminds himself to pull it back. He stops jumping so high, even misses a shot on purpose. Just one of the guys. His new friends shrug off the anomaly, while Klaus raises an eyebrow as he scowls from the bleachers.

They’re at 20. The ball gets passed to Diego, since everyone here knows by now that he’ll win for them. And he wants to win- he really does. He knows, deep in his bones somehow, that if he wins, he’ll be one of them. He won’t have grown up as an experiment, friendless in a cold mansion. If he wins, maybe he could leave here with them, buy his own drink at the bodega, go to a home with people that loved him and wake up to do it again tomorrow. A high school junior, he’d have a locker and a girlfriend and know someone, anyone who looked like him. He’d meet up with Charlie after school and forget the Umbrella Academy ever existed. If he just wins right now.

And he does. 

The ball leaves his hand and does a 180 degree loop around the hand of the kid blocking him, before soaring ten feet in the air and slamming through the hoop with so much force the backboard shakes. 

Everyone freezes this time, not just him.

He feels Klaus’ eyes boring a hole into his head. Along with everyone else’s. Finally the silence breaks when a boy a bit younger than him says: “What the fuck.”

“What was that?” someone on his team- Chris, they’d met, they’d joked a few minutes ago- asks. “Dude, what the _fuck?_ ”

Diego gulps. “Uh….”

Charlie steps forward, “Diego?”

He feels his mouth open and close like a fish. They’re all looking at him, just like he’d thought they would when he came here. How do they know he did it? How do they know it’s not a bizarre trick of the light, or the wind, or an alien? He wants to say all this, the excuses clear in his head, but all that comes out is:

“Wait, I c-c-can…” _picture the word in your mind,_ “I c-ca-c-“

“Holy shit!” The biggest guy on the other team, who had been jokingly ribbing Diego but shooting him friendly grins, storms over to him. “I knew I recognized this!”

He grabs Diego’s left arm and jerks it out. “You’re that Umbrella kid.”

The crowd closes in, all jostling to look at the tattoo on Diego’s arm he’d almost been able to forget was there.

“Which one are you?” he snickers. “I can’t ever keep you straight.”

Diego pulls his arm back, covers the umbrella like he’d been burned. 

“I’m n-not,” he manages to force out, but it doesn’t matter. The other guys have all started talking over each other and they wouldn’t hear him if he yelled. 

Everything he’d come here to get away from starts parading past his ears. 

"Not exactly fair play, Kraken. Would’ve liked to know this before he started playing."

"Guess they don’t have a court in that giant house."

"This constitutes cheating, don’t you think. Number Two, what do you think?"

"No wonder we thought he was actually good at this."

It’s like he’s not even there; they’re barely addressing him, just talking about him to each other. Like everyone always has- like he’s not a person. 

Diego considers fighting his way out of the crowd, now densely packed around the weirdo. At this moment, hitting something feels like a pretty good idea. As he’s about to close his fists, he feels a bony hand grab a fistful of his shirt and drag him backwards. 

Klaus doesn’t stop once Diego’s out of the group, just continues to steer him towards the sidewalk. The boys are still cackling, shouting.

"Oh, I know that kid, too." 

"Next time you show up, remind me and I’ll do a bunch of fucking HGH, how ‘bout that?"

"He's running back to Daddy!"

"Wait, I just bought Special K from the Séance?"

They get almost to the end of the block when a voice stops them.

“Diego- wait up!”

Klaus and Diego turn to see Charlie jogging towards them. He isn’t laughing, he doesn’t seem offended. When he stops in front of them, he actually seems sorry. 

“Don’t worry about those guys,” he says, slightly out of breath. “They just don’t like losing. If you weren’t a superhero I’m sure they’d just find some other reason to fuck with you.”

Diego nods, thoroughly unconvinced. He tenses his jaw and hopes Klaus will talk.

“Yeah, well,” Klaus says, on cue, “They have a funny way of making it real personal, don't they. So if you’ll excuse us, we have a bus to catch.”

Charlie catches Diego’s eye. “Sorry, man. Seriously.”

“It’s f-fine.” He just wants to be done, he wants this to have never happened. But Charlie seems genuine, and his smile makes Diego a bit nervous. He wants to see him again, at least.

“Look,” Charlie says, “They’re assholes. Nice guys, mostly, but they can turn on you like it’s nothing. I get it. You’re just the patsy today. But they’ll get over it.”

Diego doesn’t want to get his hopes up about playing again, but Charlie’s face is so open, he waves it off so casually, that maybe-

“Still, probably best if you don’t come back here."

He says that casually, too.

"At least not for a while."

Diego nods. “Yeah,” he says gruffly, his hope popped like a balloon. “See you around.”

He turns and starts leading Klaus away, ignoring Charlie as he starts calling after him, asking if he wants to hang out someplace else. Diego doesn’t want to hang out, he wants to go back in time and never look out that stupid window.

“Stop, Diego, I didn’t mean it like that-“

Klaus is urging Diego to turn back and try again, but Diego is past it. This never happened. This never happened.

* * *

  
Diego sits in the window of the attic. He sees Allison‘s cigarettes poking out of their hiding place under the lamp. His bare feet are cold on the metal of the fire escape. It isn’t even dark outside.

The door to the attic closes; he really isn’t in the mood for a talking-to from Pogo, he thinks about gunning it down the fire escape instead. 

“So, what a shithead I am.”

Klaus plops down on the sill next to him, opening Allison’s cigarettes.

“You were like, ‘Hey, stop dealing in front of me’ and I was like ‘...no’. Who does that, am I right?” he laughs.

“If you’re here to make me feel better-“

“You think I’m here to _make you feel better?”_ Klaus snorts. “No way. Everyone else is just driving me crazy.”

Diego relaxes. “Okay. Good.”

Klaus offers him a cigarette, which he refuses. They sit in silence for a few minutes, watching the sky change color as the sun starts to set on the other side of the Academy.

“I _am_ sorry,” Klaus says finally. “About today.”

So far, Diego’s been pretty successful at shoving down today’s incident and staring dead ahead. He doesn’t want to risk feeling sad about it; then it would just become another in a long list of things in his life to mope about. He doesn’t want to be like that. It’s not how he’s been taught.

“It’s fine,” he answers shortly.

“Yeah. You seem great.”

“Do you need something?” Diego sighs. “You just gonna hang around me all day?”

Klaus is unfazed. “Well, it’s you or Pogo.” When Diego doesn’t crack a smile, Klaus leans in, trying to catch his eye. “Hey,” he says. “It was just a game.”

“It wasn’t,” Diego snaps. “It wasn’t just a game. Look, I know you won’t understand this, but I was just trying to-“

“To what? Get out of the Academy? Feel normal? Pretend to be someone else, yeah, no. I have no idea what that’s like. I’ve never done that before.”

Diego turns and really looks at his brother. At his smeared makeup, his sixteen year old face that already seems so much older.

“You think I had a desperate urge to watch you do sports?” he scoffs. “I like acting like somebody else. We all do. We usually stick to long sleeves, though.”

He taps Diego’s tattoo with a purple-painted finger. They both look at it for a moment.

“The worst part is, I knew this was gonna happen. I _knew_ it. I just wanted...,” Diego says heavily, “This sounds goddamn stupid. I just wanted to pretend. For, like, five minutes. That’s all. And I thought, somehow, for a second, that I could get away with it. But I can’t. I’m not like them, that’s it.”

Klaus frowns. “No, you’re not.”

Diego closes his eyes and swallows. He feels a light smack on his arm. 

“But you’re like me.” Klaus says matter-of-factly. 

Diego opens his eyes.

“Maybe that’ll just make you feel worse,” Klaus adds with a laugh. Diego cracks a smile. 

“See? Yeah!” Klaus points to it. “We can just be miserable here together. Until, I don’t know. Luther dies.”

“Or Dad.”

“God, we can only hope.” He presses his palms together and looks up at the night sky in mock pleading.

Diego laughs quietly. Then, without warning, he shoots out a hand and shoves Klaus backwards, off the windowsill and into the attic. 

“What the fuck?” he moans from the floor.

“Stop selling fucking Ketamine, okay?”

“Jesus,” Klaus makes a show of rubbing his ass where he’d fallen. “If it'll keep you from shoving me out windows, fine.”

Diego smirks. “Good.”

“I thought we were having a sweet moment!”

“Nope.”

Klaus huffs and sits back down. “Wanna sneak out again tomorrow?”

“Yup. But no basketball.”

"Oh, wouldn't dream of it."

And sitting on the ledge with his brother, Diego thinks that maybe he isn’t like all the other teenagers living in the buildings he can see from here. But there are six- only six- who understand that feeling. If all seven of them are entirely alone in the world, maybe it’s at least enough that they’re all alone in the same way. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> in the present day diego hargreeves is still the first pick of the nba draft every year despite not having played since he was sixteen...
> 
> im really happy with this chapter i wont lie.....damn i do be loving diego... if you love him too why not leave a comment and tell me about it


	3. under my thumb (allison catches a train)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Now, with Ben gone, she doubts she’ll ever get him back. As the sun rises higher between the drab buildings, Allison wonders if she'll ever get any of her remaining siblings back. Vanya, who-knows-where, whom Allison always wanted to be closer with but never knew how. She’d left no phone number, no way to contact her. Perfectly reasonable- Allison hadn’t, either- but does that mean Allison may simply never see her again? 
> 
> It’s a possibility she hasn’t seriously considered: that just now, when she had closed the gate behind her, Allison may have said a last goodbye to more than just her father. 
> 
> Suddenly she wishes she’d left a note for each of them, not just for Luther. She would have told Diego she was sorry, for all the awful things she said to him and the awful things he must have assumed she wanted to. She would have thanked Klaus for the years of friendship, left him some kind of encouragement for the future, something that said she wanted it back one day. And- no, she reminds herself. She would not have been able to leave Ben anything at all.

_2006_

  
Vanya left yesterday, and ruined Allison’s plans. She had been orchestrating her great escape for weeks, ever since Ben died. But apparently, she hadn’t been the only one.

Her bags were neatly packed and tucked beneath her bed when she’d heard thundering footsteps downstairs. When she’d gone to check what the commotion was, all her remaining brothers were pacing around in a huff.

“What happened?” she’d asked.

“Vanya flew the coop,” Diego answered bitterly. Allison could tell from his voice that he had been thwarted, too.

Of course, as soon as they were eighteen, all of them could leave, no questions asked. It was a fact they had clung to for years- Allison has a vivid memory of a twelve year old Number Five marching triumphantly up to the breakfast table. “Monday,” he’d said proudly. “I went to the library, and our eighteenth birthday is on a Monday.”

Still, Allison had always had her suspicions. She knew her father was more well connected than the President; perhaps even more powerful. If he wanted to find some legal way to keep them all here into adulthood, he’d find it. And he probably wouldn’t tell them about it, either.

So, to her mind, the best option she had was to make a run for it now, before their father caught wise and locked them all in the basement or something. She wants to beat Diego and Klaus out the door- she knows they’re both planning their great escapes, too. 

Allison considers asking Luther to come with her, but she knows it would be pointless. He would be appalled at the suggestion, then she would have to deal with the hurt on his face, his desperate attempts to convince her that she's better off here. Better to leave a note and worry about it later. 

It’s five thirty in the morning- a half hour before she and her brothers have to report downstairs. Allison sits upright on her bed, fully dressed. She hadn’t been able to sleep. She retraces the path from her bedroom door to the exit for a millionth time, as if she hadn’t grown up in this house, didn’t know everything down to the pattern of grout in the bathtub. 

If she’s going to leave undetected, now is the time. She grabs her suitcase and her backpack- packing light is a necessity- and heads out the door. Her plan had been to leave out the hidden exit in the kitchen, she had replayed the path endlessly. But (she curses herself) she hadn’t accounted for the time. As she gets closer, she hears Grace rummaging around, making breakfast. Allison turns on her heel and heads upstairs, praying no one else is awake to see her slip out the front doors.

* * *

  
An hour later, Allison has her own table at an outdoor cafe. She holds a mug of coffee with both hands and repeatedly reaches out with her foot to make sure both of her bags are still on the ground. Across the street is the train station. She watches the trickle of people coming in and out of its doors. She’ll blend in, no problem. Her train leaves in twenty four minutes.

The road she had planned to take to get here had been closed; she’d ended up running down two creepy looking alleyways just to get here with time to spare.

“Excuse me, Miss?” 

Allison glances up at her waitress, a girl not much older than herself. “Sorry, we have a large party coming soon for breakfast,” she says. “How much longer will you need the table?”

Her position here, watching the station doors, had been keeping Allison sane for the last forty minutes as her coffee got cold. She badly doesn’t want to move, but her need to not cause a scene is stronger than her desire to stay. She smiles politely and heads across the street. There are some low stone benches by the doors to the station, and, determined not to lose steam, Allison finds a bright side- she’s even closer to the train now. Even less of a chance to be late.

The benches are unoccupied, as is most of the street, since it’s not even seven o’clock. Allison looks out over the emptiness. She’s never spent a lot of time here, in the city where she grew up. The longest she’s ever spent outside (not on a mission) was when she and Klaus had snuck downtown years ago. He had nicked a fairly impressive wad of cash from their father’s study and they had spent it all immediately, on the silliest and shiniest things they could find. 

She hasn’t laughed like that with Klaus in so long; he’s been distant for a few years, even more so after their last conversation. Now, with Ben gone, she doubts she’ll ever get him back. As the sun rises higher between the drab buildings, Allison wonders if she'll ever get any of her remaining siblings back. Vanya, who-knows-where, whom Allison always wanted to be closer with but never knew how. She’d left no phone number, no way to contact her. Perfectly reasonable- Allison hadn’t, either- but does that mean Allison may simply never see her again? 

It’s a possibility she hasn’t seriously considered: that just now, when she had closed the gate behind her, Allison may have said a last goodbye to more than just her father. 

Suddenly she wishes she’d left a note for each of them, not just for Luther. She would have told Diego she was sorry, for all the awful things she said to him and the awful things he must have assumed she wanted to. She would have thanked Klaus for the years of friendship, left him some kind of encouragement for the future, something that said she wanted it back one day. And- no, she reminds herself. She would not have been able to leave Ben anything at all.

Allison is sitting with her head in her hands when she feels her backpack vanish next to her foot. Looking up, she sees a man in a puffy coat sprinting with it tucked under his arm, almost to the curb already.

“Hey!” she stands, starts to chase after him. _“Fucker!”_

The crowd has thickened as rush hour starts, and he weaves in and out of her view. Within a minute, he’s across the street, disappearing down a corner. She’s about to follow when she remembers that her other bag is unattended now. If she turns back to carry it, then keeps chasing the thief, he’ll be long gone. Either way, she’s fucked. Cursing again, Allison turns around and slumps down next to her suitcase. 

Her train ticket had been in there, one way to Los Angeles. And her wallet. 

What now, she wonders, looking out into the street. The morning had been a comedy of errors so far; would it be so bad to turn back, just try again another day? 

A paranoid voice in her head starts whispering. _That’s exactly what he would want you to think._

Wouldn’t it be just like him to do it this way. Rather than put his foot down and forbid her from leaving, it would be much more clever, much more effective to teach Allison through experience that the outside world is too much for her. It would be easy for him to shut down a few roads, book a few tables, hire someone fast and sneaky to steal the exact thing she needed in order to leave for good. He could have orchestrated this in less than an hour and have Allison back in the Academy forever without breaking a sweat.

He won’t win, she tells herself fiercely. Two can play at this game. I’m Allison fucking Hargreeves and I know how to fight dirty.

She had been proud of herself; it had been weeks since she'd done it, the longest streak ever. Not once since Ben's death. But this is too important.

Steaming, Allison grabs her remaining bag and storms into the train station. She spots the ticket counter, the bored attendant sitting with her chin in her hand. There’s no one in line- if there were, she almost definitely would have second thoughts. But as it is, Allison folds her hands on the counter and says:

“I heard a rumor you gave me a ticket for the next train to L.A..”

An instant later, as it’s being handed to her, Allison adds: “First class.”

* * *

  
It’s always hard to stop once she’s started.

She suddenly has a hankering for more coffee, and an almond croissant that looks up invitingly from a coffee shop in the station. And so, with her wallet long gone, she gets them.

A young man recognizes her as the Rumor, excitedly asks for her autograph. And almost as quickly as he’d come, he walks away with his mouth firmly shut.

Once the train pulls in, Allison realizes she hadn’t booked her own compartment to sleep in. She spots an attendant coming down the aisle, and it doesn’t end up being a problem.

Dropping her suitcase on her folding bed, Allison sighs contentedly. The trip will take a couple of days. She had planned to keep a low profile, so she would stay unrecognized, but now she’s revising that plan. What does it matter if she’s seen, when she can be unseen in a matter of seconds. She starts to think the same thing she always thinks, when her powers get the better of her: why has she ever been afraid of them? What’s so wrong with getting what she wants, really. 

She pushes Klaus’ voice out of her head, what he’d said to her the last time they'd talked. Since that fallout, they had avoided each other like the plague. 

The train is leaving the city behind. Allison watches the skyline shrink, her father and brothers getting further away by the second. Good riddance. 

She dozes off after a few minutes, barely laying down, shoes still tightly laced. 

* * *

Allison finds herself in the Academy courtyard. The day is dreary, gray, and wet. It’s freezing cold, but she’s forgotten her blazer; she stands in the open doorway in her short-sleeved uniform with her teeth chattering.

“It’s not so bad after a while.”

Sitting cross-legged on the ground, also in his shirtsleeves, is Number Five. He’s facing away from her, leaned over something in concentration. 

“And it’s colder inside, anyway,” he adds.

Allison slowly walks up beside him. She doesn’t know why she’s afraid to see his face. Part of her is expecting bloody wounds, eyes missing, mold and decay. But when he looks up, he looks exactly how he did on the day he walked out the door. It's almost worse.

“Wanna sit?” he asks, and looks back down before Allison answers.

He’s shuffling a deck of cards, over and over again, with the speed and flair of a casino magician. Allison waits for him to stop and deal them out, but he doesn’t.

“So, Ben, huh,” he says. “What a funeral- a total shitshow.”

“Yeah,” Allison notices they’re sitting on the exact spot they had just buried their brother. It looks untouched. “I think Dad’s putting up a statue.”

Number Five frowns at that. “Hm. Seems about right.”

A light dusting of snow begins to fall, speckling Five’s vest with flecks of white. 

“You think it’s really him?” he asks finally. “Trying to stop you.”

“It wouldn’t exactly be hard for him to shut down a couple of roads.”

“True.” Five starts to methodically build a house of cards on the pavement. “But did he?”

Allison thinks on it and notices that Five had been right about getting used to the cold. 

“I don’t know,” she answers. “Maybe it’s one big test. Or a really messed up training exercise.”

He’s almost done with his house of cards. “Maybe. Or he’s not trying to stop you at all.”

Allison remembers the sound of the front doors slamming behind Five. Their father had called out for him one more time, then returned to his dinner.

“I think Dad gets tired of always getting his way,” Five says thoughtfully. “I mean, he only adopted us because he thought it would be a challenge. I think he gets bored.”

“Yeah,” Allison watches him place the last card gingerly on top. “That does seem boring.”

Five looks at it with a satisfied smirk. 

“Well, you’d know.”

And then he stands and walks away, right through the house of cards, so it flutters in so many pieces onto the snowy brick.

* * *

Allison jerks awake to an announcement that the dining car is now open. 

She glances once out the window before burying her face in her hands. They’re well outside the city now; nothing passes by except a blurry mass of trees.

Her head hurts. Even half a decade since she’d seen him, even in her dreams, Number Five has a way of getting under her skin. Suddenly the paper coffee cup on her foldout table seems a lot less inviting. The whole compartment, really. 

This is the part where she swears off her powers. It happens every few months. She convinces herself that she’ll stop, for real this time, and then she doesn’t. She never does.

It was what Klaus had sneered at her when they had argued, when he’d stumbled into her room by mistake at eight o’clock in the morning, covered in glitter and smelling like vomit. 

_“Please, Al. You really think we’re any different?”_

She’d taken offense at the time. Now she wonders if Klaus, too, tells himself that he’ll stop. For real this time.

Allison stays in her compartment as much as possible during the trip. When she leaves for meals, she reasons that she _has_ to rumor the servers. She doesn’t have any money, after all. It doesn’t hurt anyone.

As the train gets further from the city, she’s able to make her father and her brothers smaller in her mind. Klaus' voice gets quieter, and so does Five’s.

She doesn’t need any of them, not even Luther. She doesn’t need anyone. 

There aren't any more serendipitous obstacles. When the train makes stops, she begins to expect a breakdown, a bomb threat, something to prove that her theory was right. He would do anything to keep her firmly under his thumb, after all. But nothing happens. The more nothing happens, the more Allison considers the other theory, the one posed by the Five in her dream. That he isn't trying to stop her at all. That he came down to breakfast, noticed her empty seat, and said nothing. Somehow, it's worse- a confirmation of the thing they had all feared since they were children, but had never given a voice to. That he truly, to his bones, doesn't give a shit about any of them.

And when she gets to L.A., the first thing she does is rumor the cab driver. That’s the last time. She rumors the bodega owner. That’s the last time. She rumors the new landlord. That’s the last time. She rumors the casting director. That’s the-

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> leave a comment if you vibed!!!
> 
> KLAUS CHAPTER UP SOON BABIES


	4. closing my eyes (klaus makes new friends)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> When his siblings sneak out, they usually use the kitchen door, which lets them slip onto the crowded sidewalk without drawing attention. Klaus thinks it’s a rookie move. Between the risk of running into Mom and the risk of being spotted slipping out of the building, it’s not worth the convenience. Klaus prefers to leave through the one place in the house no one is ever in.
> 
> Halfway out Number Five’s window, Klaus steals a glance at the abandoned room. The only people who see it anymore are him and Grace, who comes in once a week to clean. Klaus looks at the gleaming surfaces and thinks maybe it would be more respectful if they let it gather dust.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this turned out.....really long. dont expect another chapter this long just because klaus has made me fail no simp september

_2006_  
_Two Weeks Earlier_

  
Klaus could pinpoint, if he wanted to, the exact day his father gave up on him forever. In fact, he knows the exact moment. He’s slightly proud that it was more than a solid year before he gave up on any of the rest of them, a year before his siblings began, one by one, to realize that Klaus wasn’t completely off-base when he decided to lock himself in his room, or rather, disappear completely when the red alarm began to blare.

It had been after a high-profile mission, fought in broad daylight in the middle of a crowded street. It had ended spectacularly, like an 80’s superhero movie where explosions look more like fireworks displays than agents of destruction. Klaus had had fairly little to do with the victory- his job had always been to sit around and hope that someone useful feels like showing up when he tries to conjure them. Sometimes it does help (a particularly dramatic example of his heroism- Klaus had gotten credit for diffusing a bomb by being able to listen to instructions from a beheaded rocket scientist, and repeat them to Diego.) But most of the time he would sit on his hands and wait for the car to pick them up. 

And the last few years, he hasn’t been any help at all, since he found the big red STOP button on his powers.

The recent success had resulted in a flurry of calls to the house- The Umbrella Academy is back and better than ever, all rumors of a fracture after Number Five’s disappearance should be dismissed- and what seemed like weeks of interviews and TV appearances. Klaus never complained about the spotlight, seeing as it’s always been the only part of hero work that he likes, but the schedule of a celebrity is a royal pain in the ass. 

That particular morning, he had been up all night, far from his siblings, and completely unaware of the time. They had been booked on a nationally syndicated morning show for an interview. It was a huge deal, according to Luther, but to Klaus it didn’t seem much different than the interviews they had done a few years prior, back when the team was six and not five. It seemed to Klaus that Reginald just wanted them to prove that they weren’t washed up without their little time traveler, who had always been a favorite of the public.

When he had pointed this out to Luther, he’d given Klaus a look that said clearly: _Yeah, but we’re not gonna talk about that._

The red carpet was rolled out: a private plane- “Don't we already have a plane,” mused Ben- flew them into New York and they were shacked up in a hotel suite big enough for ten. But despite the constant smiles and overflowing mini-fridges, Klaus thought it was obvious that they were being held prisoner, stuck in a blank white room while the most batshit city in the world hummed and bustled below them. Looking out the window, Klaus wasn’t about to deny its invitation.

He spent the next hour trying to convince Allison to go with him.

“We have to be at the studio at six tomorrow!”

“Yeah, perfect. We’ll be back by then, c’mon.”

“And how do you suggest we get past the security guards they’ve got outside?” 

“Um, hello,” he grabbed her cheek and pinched her the way she hated, “You’re our ace in the hole, it’ll be like we were never gone.”

Allison pulled away and crossed her arms. “Look, I want to, of course. But we can’t. Even if we don’t get caught, it’s not like we know people here.”

“Exactly!” Klaus grinned, but she refused to budge.

His next choice was Diego, but he made even less progress with him. He rolled his eyes and smacked Klaus upside the head at the mere suggestion.

“Have fun getting mugged, dipshit.”

Klaus didn’t want to suffer Ben’s worry or Luther’s disapproval, so he didn’t bother. He ended up sneaking out by himself, ducking down behind a cleaning lady’s cart and high tailing it past the bodyguard in the hallway. (Whether the name on his checks was the TV show’s or his father’s, he had no idea.)

Klaus remembers wandering the streets for a while, breathing in a different city’s stink for once. He remembers spotting a group of kids a few years older than him, wearing some very exciting shoes. And for the life of him, he can’t remember a single thing about that night after that.

The next thing he remembers is a cluster of strangers wearing black clothes and headphones, all sighing in relief at the sight of him. Within minutes, they had Klaus in a makeup chair. 

_I knew I’d make it in time,_ he thought smugly. Perhaps prematurely.

“Good lord, boy, what is on your face,” the woman leaning over him muttered. She pulled out a wipe and started scrubbing under his eyes, across his mouth. The wipe came away covered in purples and blacks- Klaus doesn’t remember how it happened, but he’s not exactly surprised. She covered him in too much powder in an attempt to conceal the dark circles under his eyes, as well as what looked like a new cut scabbing up by Klaus’ eyebrow.

Sighing, the makeup lady caught the eye of a different woman and pulled her over. 

“See the problem?” she said to her, gesturing at Klaus as if he were a stubborn stain on her rug. 

“Oh, God, he doesn’t match,” the second woman moaned.

“He doesn’t match.”

The distressed woman leaned in, her face going in and out of focus as she tried to get his attention. “Klaus?” she asked. “What happened to your shorts?”

Klaus looked down and saw his uniform shorts were gone, replaced by a pair of lime green velvet leggings. A hazy image floated back.

“Oh,” he mumbled. “Traded them.”

“He traded them,” she huffed in disbelief to her colleague. “Let’s try and find him something to have him match the others. Real pants, at the very least. They’re on in fifteen, get someone else to scrub whatever that shit is off his sleeve.”

“My stomach hurts,” he blurted.

More people started darting around, each blurrier than the last, all attempting to clean him up. Ten minutes later, wearing too-long suit pants, Klaus was ushered onto a soundstage and shoved onto a stool behind Allison, as far away from the camera as he could be without drawing attention. 

Three minutes later, the smiley blonde host was instructed discreetly to ask him no questions.

And seven minutes after that, Klaus threw up, live on the Today Show.

That was the day his father gave up on him.

* * *

After that, he’d been able to get out of most Umbrella Academy related activities for a while, for PR reasons if nothing else. But once the commotion around the incident died down, he thought he would be expected to rejoin the team, get his head on straight and fight crime like the good old days.

Yet, when the alarm goes off now, everyone automatically assumes that Klaus won’t so much as look up from his magazine. While the others go on missions, he mills about his room, steals from the bar, smokes in the attic. Occasionally he’ll find Vanya and paint his toenails on her bedroom floor while she practices the violin. Those afternoons Klaus finds especially peaceful, even though his presence seems to make her nervous. He wishes he was better equipped to tell her how much he likes listening, how she shouldn’t worry- but he’s not, and so most days he listens quietly at her door for a minute before going about his business.

Today, the loud blaring wakes him up from where he’d fallen asleep on his bedroom floor. Moaning, Klaus reaches up and pulls the blanket off his bed, deciding to curl up in it here rather than bother to stand and walk even one step to the mattress. His head is threatening to split open: how much did he drink last night? 

His hope of going back to sleep is dashed by the thundering of four sets of feet up and down the hall as they clamor to get ready, each step echoing into his ear still pressed to the wood. Klaus is expecting no one, not even Grace, to so much as knock on his door to ask if he’s coming.

Today, though, there’s a knock. 

“Come in,” Klaus groans.

“Klaus, I- what are you doing on the floor?” He opens an eye and sees Ben looking quizzically down at him from the doorway. 

“Praying,” Klaus answers flatly. “What do you want?”

“Just wondering if you have my boots. The black ones, I can’t find them.”

Klaus rolls over, stares at the ceiling. The blaring of the alarm starts to turn into a rhythmic sort of song.

“Nope. Haven’t seen them.”

“Are you sure?” Ben asks. “Just because last time I lost a pair of shoes, I found them in here covered in googly eyes…?”

“Uh-huh. Is that a question.”

“No,” Ben looks into the hall, where Diego has just run by in his full gear. “Look, I have to go, do you have my boots or don’t you?”

Klaus shrugs. “Check under the bed, maybe.”

Ben curses and rummages around before pulling out two black boots with their laces tied together. “For real, Klaus?”

“You don’t like them?” Klaus asks innocently. 

It’s then that Ben notices the gaudy pattern drawn on their soles in silver and gold marker- on the right boot a swirling, precise pattern that had taken Klaus the better part of an hour, and on the left boot a giant veiny dick.

“You’re the worst.” Ben rolls his eyes and storms out of the room. 

"Catch ya later!" Klaus calls after him.

Once the house has gone totally quiet, Klaus wonders what now. He’s fully awake, that ship has sailed. He hears Vanya begin to play from down the hall. The sunlight streaming in from the window says that today is bound to be beautiful- there aren’t any clouds at all. Klaus finds it excruciating. His head is about to split open from the light, and has Vanya ever once played this goddamn loud?

Klaus hauls himself to his feet and immediately goes hunting for his stash. His primary hiding spot, the back of his bookshelf, is dry. He starts rummaging around, more and more frantically, before looking over his destroyed room and accepting that he’s all out. 

Something stirs in the corner of his vision.

“Fuck it,” he mutters. 

When his siblings sneak out, they usually use the kitchen door, which lets them slip onto the crowded sidewalk without drawing attention. Klaus thinks it’s a rookie move. Between the risk of running into Mom and the risk of being spotted slipping out of the building, it’s not worth the convenience. Klaus prefers to leave through the one place in the house no one is ever in.

Halfway out Number Five’s window, Klaus steals a glance at the abandoned room. The only people who see it anymore are him and Grace, who comes in once a week to clean. Klaus looks at the gleaming surfaces and thinks maybe it would be more respectful if they let it gather dust.

* * *

  
Klaus’ usual plug hangs out on a bench, a twenty minute walk from the academy. Normally, it’s nothing, but between the hangover and the coming cold front starting to announce itself, Klaus is slowing down by the step. Halfway there, he sees a bench on the edge of the park that looks particularly enticing. But he knows once he stops it’ll be even harder to start again. 

He’s about to push past it when he sees, smack dab in the sidewalk ten feet ahead of him, a man with half his head mangled into a bloody pulp. He’s staring right at Klaus, blood dripping off him and leaving no stains on the concrete. He opens what’s left of his mouth and lets out a moan. 

Fuck this. A jolt of new energy surges through Klaus as he turns on his heel and books it as fast as he can down a sidestreet. How long has it been since he’d seen a ghost, a fully formed one? It feels like every time he (accidentally) gets sober, they get worse. He’d always assumed he would grow into his power- that’s what Pogo and Mom always told him when he would leave a training session in tears. But the last few years have proved otherwise. It’s only ever going to get worse. So Klaus is going to need to adapt. He's going to need to get better at running.

The street takes him into a considerably seedier neighborhood and tacks a good five minutes onto his walk. Worth it to avoid whatever the man was trying to say to him, worth it to not have to get any closer. 

Another shadow stirs in Klaus’ periphery as he walks. Ducking his head, he picks up the pace and doesn’t notice the beat up old van pulling over next to him. It rides slowly alongside him for a few yards before he hears:

“Yo!”

Klaus ignores it. Nothing good comes from a shout out a van window. 

“You’re Four, right?”

Klaus shoots a glance at the van. The door has slid open, the speaker leans precariously out of it. It’s a girl around Klaus’ age, flanked by two other kids staring at him with dopey smiles. The driver is a guy a few years older, also looking appreciatively.

“The Séance? That’s you?” the same girl slurs. The weed smell wafting out of the van is absolutely heavenly.

“Uh,” Klaus tries not to get distracted. “Yeah. Yeah, that’s me.”

“No shit, man!” the girl howls. “We love you! For real! I used to have one of your, uh- what’s it called-“ she gestures with her hands.

“Dolls,” one of her friends provides. 

“Hey,” the other drones, eyes bloodshot. Klaus tries to shake the vision of the ghost he’d left a few blocks away. _“Action figure._ Right, Séance?”

Klaus cracks a smile. “'Doll' is just fine. So,” he steps a bit closer. “What are you guys up to?”

He hopes they get what he means- they seem like the type who would. And thank the sweet lord, they do.

“We’re about to go pick something up. Why, you wanna come?”

“Do you guys mind?”

“Do we mind,” the driver snorts from behind his cracked window. “Séance wants to party with us, he asks if we _mind._ Get the fuck in here, man.”

Within twenty seconds of the van door slamming shut behind him, Klaus has a spliff between his lips. It’s exactly what he needed, he feels the edges of his senses begin to dull, the low murmurs fading. It’s exactly what he needed… and a little more.

“Isn’t there something going on downtown?” one of his godsent new friends asks.

“Huh?”

“I heard something about the Umbrella Academy, I think. You supposed to be somewhere?”

Klaus takes another long pull. “Nope. Done with all that shit. Hey, what’s in this?”

“You like it?” they ask.

Grinning, Klaus nods. 

“So, what does it matter?”

* * *

They don’t tell Klaus what they’re going to pick up, they just leave him laying in the back of the van for a while as they go into a dilapidated apartment building. Logic tells him they aren’t in there for very long but the laced spliff tells him it takes about three hours before they pile back in with a baggie full of brown mush.

“Ever done shrooms, Séance?” one of them asks. For the life of him, he can’t get a single one of his new friends’ names to stick in his head. 

Klaus sits up clumsily. “Oh yeah, baby,” he says. “Let’s get weird.”

They all laugh raucously- everything he says seems to be utterly hilarious. They all love his outfit- low cut pants and a flowy pink shirt he picked out for Allison when they’d snuck out a few months ago. They all think his makeup is fantastic and even admire the way he holds the spliff when they pass it. All in all, a pretty good afternoon so far.

Klaus has figured out by now that if he wanders any city for long enough he’ll find other teenagers who want to get loaded with him. But it’s kind of nice to get loaded with _fans._

His first kiss had been with a fan, actually, when he was thirteen. It was a boy who had caught up with him after a press event. Klaus had snuck off with him and probably would have done a little more had Diego not burst into the supply closet at the exact wrong time and dragged Klaus out by the elbow. 

If he wanted to he could probably hook up with any of these people. They’ve made no secret of the fact they’ve all slept with each other at one point or another. It’s still pretty early in the afternoon. 

Is it pretty early? Klaus has lost track of time back here on the smoky, colorfully draped pillows- oh, now one of them is turning into a purple potted plant.

At some point, he asks the driver where they’re going, but he doesn’t quite catch the answer. Whatever.

He stays stuck to his spot for another murky length of time, watching the walls expand and retract, watching his new friends’ hair all switch places with each other’s. His own legs have turned into a bed of soil for the plants to take root. _That’s lovely,_ Klaus thinks. _We’re all made of the same thing. One day, when I die, I’ll rot right here into these plants and help them the way they helped me._

Klaus watches the plants grow and shrink again, touching the van’s ceiling and retracting back into sprouts. How poetic. He makes a note to write about them on his wall later. 

Oh, right.

He reaches up a heavy arm to tap on the driver’s shoulder. “I have a question,” he says slowly. 

The driver suddenly is nodding at him, directly to his left. Apparently Klaus had been able to grow his legs back and climb into the passenger's seat. He doesn’t remember his question, or the driver’s answer, but Klaus' own response seems to make sense as he says it. 

“That’s a long drive,” he’s saying. 

“Sure is,” the driver replies. “That’s why we had to get all set up back there. Just a few more hours.”

Klaus nods appreciatively and slumps down in his seat. The landscape outside is changing rapidly, from gray to green to gray to green to rusty red brick. Klaus slides his finger along the glass, trying to trace out the shapes he sees in the short instant they're in front of him. Everything passes, everything moves. How peaceful a concept that is. 

As they drive, Klaus begins ever so slightly to come back into himself, enough to move all of his fingers and toes. Not enough to see colors correctly.

Lolling his head to the side, he sees the landscape has changed yet again. They’re on a bare stretch of highway, nothing but old trees in every direction. What’s the word for that, the feeling of a road trip on the Eastern seaboard? He’s never been on a road trip, but he’s heard some word from some book. Americana. 

Klaus forms the word over and over again, feeling his mouth change shape, wondering about the miracle of evolution, can their monkey ancestors move their mouths like this? He could ask later. 

Music is playing, a song he loves. He doesn’t know the words at the moment, but he loves it. 

It’s when the song ends that he sees something out the window. 

Up ahead, on the side of the road, it looks like a black blob coming towards them. As they get closer, it looks more like the outline of a person, standing still on the side of the road. And they pass it.

Klaus does a double take, a triple take, almost smacks his head against the window as they do. That can’t be right. This is an especially weird hallucination. 

Why would Ben be out here?

Klaus cranes his neck as his brother gets smaller. He’s looking right at Klaus, clad in all black, wearing the boots he’d taken from under the bed earlier today. His face is blank, eyes wide.

Something is horribly wrong.

Ben used to call it his ‘Spider Sense’. Klaus had a way of knowing when something terrible was about to happen. On missions, Diego liked to call him the ‘We’ve Got Company’ guy. It isn't a power, they don't think, but whatever it is, Klaus knows when a shoe is about to drop.

“Stop,” he stammers. “Stop the car.”

“What?” someone behind him asks.

Still looking out the window, Klaus raises his voice. “Stop it, I need to get out.”

“We’re in the middle of nowhere, what d-“

“I know, okay?” Klaus says. Ben is almost out of sight. “Stop the car! Seriously!”

Feeling more desperate, Klaus lunges at the driver, who slams the brakes with such force Klaus smacks his head on the dashboard.

“What the fuck, man?” he demands, but Klaus is already halfway out the door.

He runs as fast as he can- which isn’t currently very fast- to where he’d seen Ben. There isn’t anyone here. “Ben?” he calls uncertainly. He’d seen him. He’d been here.

Another door slams. “What’s happening, Klaus? Everything alright?”

Klaus squints into the woods. “I saw- I thought I saw my brother,” he calls back.

“Out here?” 

He turns back to the group now huddled on the side of the road and realizes how stupid he must look. They’re all on magic mushrooms and who knows what else (he’s starting to suspect the spliff had been dipped in acid). How ridiculous of him to almost crash these nice people's car over a hallucination. What a fucking party foul. 

Bashfully, Klaus heads back to the van, feeling a hell of a lot more sober than he’d felt a few minutes ago.

He asks how long they’ve been out of the city. 

Forty five minutes.

It feels like it’s been six hours.

Klaus asks, would it be too much trouble, could they just drive him home. He feels fucking sick.

They try to convince him to stay, but he’s too rattled. They’re nice about it; they turn around at the next exit and head back. Maybe if he wasn’t the Séance they wouldn’t be so willing to add an hour and a half to their journey. 

The van stops across from the Academy entrance. Klaus checks for the Rolls Royce and breathes a sigh of relief- he’d made it before the team did.

He bids goodbye to his new friends, pays them twenty bucks for some of their weed, and trudges inside.

As he collapses onto his bed, listening to the steady sound of Vanya’s violin through the wall, Klaus wonders why he got so spooked by his vision of Ben. He’s had bad trips before- usually he just closes his eyes and finds a corner to ride it out in, then gets right back to the party once it’s over. But something about seeing Ben (or a mirage of him) standing still on the highway, staring right at him, didn’t sit right at all. Klaus still feels that jolt of panic, the urge to run, like when he was twelve and shouted at his siblings to get down the moment before bullets started raining. 

Now will be a good time to ride it out and calm down. Things around the room still don’t look quite right. Before he tries to sleep, Klaus remembers his thought from earlier, warm and gentle in the van. He grabs a permanent marker from his desk and sits up. Finding a blank spot on the wall, he writes:

_Everything passes everything moves. Pretty how we are made of the same dirt_

Then he slumps onto his back and doesn’t wake up until the front door slams.

* * *

Usually, his siblings getting back from a mission is announced by a loud argument echoing through the halls. Who did this wrong, who ignored last week’s notes, who didn’t have someone else’s back. Today, Klaus is woken up by the even more violent sound of wordless footsteps.

He waits, unmoving, for the bickering to come, but it doesn’t. The footsteps move up into the hall, a few sets pass his door. Klaus wonders if he should force himself to sit up, see what all the silence is about. 

Then he hears Vanya voice his same concern from the hall. “What’s going on?”

The footsteps stop. No answers come.

“What is it…?” she repeats. 

Still, the hallway is dead quiet. Klaus pushes through his stomach ache, hauls himself to his feet. He pokes his head out the door and takes in the scene.

Vanya stands to his right, bow in hand, face unreadable as she waits for a reply. 

To Klaus’ left is Luther and Allison. At the end of the hall is Diego. Each of them, to varying degrees, is covered in blood. 

“Where’s Ben?” Klaus’ mouth works before his brain does.

His question hangs. Abruptly, Diego bolts into his own room, slamming the door so hard behind him Klaus hears his dartboard fall off the wall and clatter to the floor. 

Allison looks like she’s ready to puke. Luther has no expression at all, but the bits of his face that aren’t splattered with gore are whiter than Klaus has ever seen. 

“He…. ” Luther starts, then stops. 

_“Where is he?”_ Vanya says with more force than they’ve heard from her in years.

Klaus would admire that if he didn’t already know the answer to her question. He knows exactly where Ben is.

* * *

He holds off from attempting to conjure him. It feels slightly disrespectful, he tells anyone who asks him why, but the truth is he’s worried he won’t be able to. It would be beyond pathetic if he couldn’t.

Everyone in the house gets angrier with him in the days after Ben’s death, the longer he refuses to contact him. Diego is the one who finally snaps at him. Diego, who unfortunately knows him best.

“You don’t give a single shit about respect, Klaus,” he sneers in front of everyone, shoves Klaus in the chest for good measure. “Admit it. You’re just too goddamn fried.”

“Look, I just-“

“No, no more excuses. You weren’t-" he backs off. "I hope your _fun_ is worth it to you.” He storms away. Klaus supposes he should be grateful that Diego stopped himself from saying what he really wanted to say, but the effect is the same.

Klaus wasn’t there. Ben died and Klaus wasn’t there.

Later, Vanya tells him quietly that Diego didn’t really mean any of it. He's been snapping at everyone ever since it happened, looking for someone to blame. If Klaus knew her better, he’d be more comfortable saying that Diego must have meant it, or else he would have lied.

As the funeral looms closer, Klaus feels the cracks that had appeared between his siblings years ago grow into chasms almost overnight. He thinks he catches Vanya packing a bag. 

The van weed is gone before he knows it. He sneaks out in the middle of the night and gets pills from his usual guy. He ups the dosage a lot, and he doesn’t tell a soul that he's seen Ben already. They’ll only use it against him.

His only hope for the Academy now is Allison, his best friend, his confidant. But he manages to fuck that up, too. 

(Later, when he's older, he'll wonder to a court-mandated counselor if he pushed Allison away on purpose. She won't have an answer for him.)

The morning before the funeral, he stumbles into Allison's room thinking that it's his. And Klaus knows. The second he sees the look on her face, the disgust, the disappointment, he knows that it’s over. She blames him, too. They all do, and they will forever. And Klaus agrees, which is why he decides to attack.

They only argue for a few minutes before Klaus lands a real blow. 

“Please, Al. You really think we’re any different?” At this point, he just wants her to hit him, to scream in his face. He’d like to feel something other than the gray-static nothing of the Oxy coursing through his veins and see something other than Ben, standing like a monument on the side of that road. 

“What’s that supposed to mean?” she demands.

Klaus laughs, as cold a sound as he can manage. “The difference between your addiction and mine,” he slurs, stepping closer, “Is that the only person I hurt is myself.”

Allison steps back like she’s been slapped, eyes swimming. Cutting through the haze, Klaus feels a twinge of guilt- not the emotion he’d been going for, he’s had his fill of it lately- until her face twists in rage and she storms out of her own bedroom. 

His first instinct is to run after her. The words had tasted rotten in his mouth, he would have been better off looking for a rush by holding his hand over a candle or something. He wants to go after her, tell her everyone’s on edge after Ben and he didn’t mean it. 

Instead, he stumbles into his room and feels around for his marker. In the early morning light he’s just able to find his most recent note. 

_Everything passes everything moves. Pretty how we are made of the same dirt_

With shaking hands, he crosses out a word and writes a new one in capital letters. 

* * *

What he’d said to Allison isn’t him. He wants to tell her that so badly. But he’s decided he’s never coming back here, never seeing any of them again. It would be better if she goes on hating him so they can just live their lives in peace, let their numbers fade away and go their separate ways. 

Allison and Diego were his last two real ties. And look, he thinks as they avoid him: all taken care of.

At the funeral, he can already feel it happening. No one speaks to him, no one makes eye contact. 

Really, it’s a blessing they’ve all grown up so withholding. This would be a much worse funeral if he had to reveal just how out of it he is, or if they dared to voice the truth that seemed clearer to Klaus by the minute. That his choices, his weakness is why they spent last night trying to ignore the crew their father had hired to dig a six foot hole in the courtyard.

And when his siblings disperse, arguing like the good old days, Klaus looks down at Ben’s coffin, takes a swig of gin, and decides to try something. 

* * *

Three weeks later, Klaus packs the few belongings he needs in an old leather backpack. Over his shoulder, Ben tells him that he should ditch a few more things if he’s still not sure where he’s going to stay. He reminds Klaus again that he should wait to leave until he has a plan, and Klaus retorts again that he can shove it.

On his way out the door, he takes one look back at the note on his wall, his recent adjustment to it.

_Everything passes everything moves._

“Ready?” Ben sighs.

“Yeah. Sure.” Klaus turns off the light.

_FUCKED how we are made of the same dirt_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> do the siblings really blame klaus for bens death? probably not!! they probably all blame themselves separately... thats The Reggie Effect baby 
> 
> please come talk to me i love hearing from you guys!!! and i promise the next chapter will be lighter. i sorta promise

**Author's Note:**

> leave a comment, why not!! and/or find me on tumblr and twitter @ curlymcclain !


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